Yankton, SD Area Prairie Fires, Apr 1889

THOSE AWFUL FIRES.

Reports of Destruction Still Coming From All Parts of South Dakota.

Everything in the Path of the Flames Swept Clean---Some Lives Lost.

Remarkable Humidity Reported by the Yankton Signal Office---Aid for Leola.

YANKTON, S. D., April 5.---The list of losses by Tuesday's prairie fires in this vicinity increases, and the visitation assumes the form of a wide-spread calamity. Yankton county alone has suffered to the probable extent of $150,000, and as many as seventy-five farmers are homeless, most of them losing everything but their lives and the lives of their families. The Jamesville neighborhood has suffered most severely. It is peopled by Russians, who had covered their farms with timber, fine buildings and fences. These are now a blackened waste, and the losses are generally without insurance. It was no ordinary prairie fire. In it fearful force it licked up everything combustible, and grass and stubble and wood broke into flame seemingly without coming in contact with fire.

The conditions seemed similar to those existing at the time of the great Chicago fire and the fires in the Wisconsin woods, when the atmosphere was almost ready to ignite and burn. An illustration is given in the case of a Yankton county farmer who placed his valuable papers and money in a wood-box and deposited the box in the middle of a plowed field with its contents. The box was reduced to ashes, though there was no way for the fire to cross the plowed surroundings. The Yankton signal station records shows that during the gale the humidity was reduced from 74, normal, to 7, almost absolute dryness. An intense electrical condition prevailed, and to this phenomena was added a wind velocity of fifty miles an hour. All things considered, the visitation was as remarkable as it was calamitous.

Aberdeen Weekly News, Aberdeen, SD 6 Apr 1889
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Transcribed by Linda Horton. Thank you, Linda!